Sex and sleep.
Is that all it was to him? All it meant?
Am I so terrible that he had to avoid me?
Well.
Plot twist: now he has no choice!
I thought we were developing a friendship, but even that couldn’t withstand the physical turn our relationship took.
So much for maturity.
“Did you just call him Romeo?” Aunt Myrtle cackles. “In my day, there was no such thing, just men marrying a dame so he could finally get her in the sack. They only pretended to be gentlemen.”
The four of us cast furtive glances around the table, Jack’s eyes wide as saucers and Eliza’s ready with a laugh.
“You use the word dame, too, Auntie?” Jack asks her, adopting the family nickname for their great aunt. “Blokes back in the day were bored—they didn’t have Netflix.”
Aunt Myrtle shakes her head. “Netflix is the code word for sex.”
“No, Netflix is the code word for ‘I want to stay home and be lazy.’”
“Well we didn’t have that when I was young. We didn’t even have phones or computers. All I had was a Jack in the Crack.”
Rome’s dad laughs. “Don’t you mean a Jack in the Box?”
“Had one of them, too.” The old woman slaps at her knee, and I wish I felt as much gusto at the moment as she does. Instead, I’m dreading the night to come.
13
ROMAN
There is no talking my mother out of having us stay; already she is a flurry of activity, bustling from room to room, making sure Eliza and Jack have enough warm blankets and pillows, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and towels for the guest bathroom.
It’s as if the king and queen of England have arrived.
She is positively tickled we’ve been marooned.
Snowed in, as it were, a cliché if ever there was one.
We shouldn’t be driving, obviously—the snow is coming down so heavily I can’t see the street in front of the house, and in the distance, the telltale orange blinking lights from the salt truck and snowplow appear through the low visibility.
Another thing I cannot talk my mother out of? Rooming me with Lilly. Mom thinks we’re in a relationship so naturally she’d pop us in my bedroom; I certainly can’t tell her we broke up because:
That’s a lie.
You can’t break up with someone you’re not dating, even if you are fake dating them.
Why the hell would I have brought her to Thanksgiving if we were broken up?
“Oh by the way, Mom, she and I had sex and I came in three seconds and now I’m a laughingstock.”
Yeah, no.
Not happening.
Dining room table has been cleared. Dishes have been wiped clean, washed, and stored away—leftovers will be evenly distributed in the morning. We’ve chatted while the girls prepare the guest room, more blankets added to all the beds for adequate snuggling.
“No funny business under this roof,” Dad intones after the rest of the evening is spent talking in front of the fire, in the living room. We’re all yawning and tired—it’s been a long day of pretending.
Pretending to be cordial to Lilly.
Ignoring her with her seated beside me, afraid to touch her or bump into her accidentally—which happened every ten seconds during dinner.
Sitting near her and smelling her shampoo and perfume only served to remind me of her naked body, her delicate moans, how quickly I came.
Everything comes down to those last few seconds.
“No funny business, sir,” Jack tells him in that refined British accent the ladies all seem to love. “Wouldn’t think of it.”
He nudges me.
I nudge him back. “Knock it off, I’m nervous enough,” I mumble.
“You’re a corker, Romeo—you got this.” He uses the moniker my mother threw out tonight, and I cringe. I’m hardly anyone’s idea of a romantic leading character, but I appreciate his confidence in me.
After Mom gives the girls each a set of her pajamas to wear for the night, I suddenly find myself alone with Lilly in my bedroom. I leave the door open longer than necessary, the lights and sounds from the interior of the house slowly fading into silence and darkness.
The stark white snow outside seems to brighten everything inside.
She is sitting cross-legged on the bed when I walk back through the bedroom door; I went to my brother’s room to help him beat the next level of his video game, something I used to do all the time when I lived at home.
Alex is a little shit, but I love him to death.
“Everything alright?” I ask Lilly, slowly closing the door behind me, wishing I could leave it wide open. “Why aren’t you under the covers?”
She shrugs her shoulders, clothed in my mother’s blue and white satin button-down pajama top. It’s a prim outfit, especially for bed. “I thought maybe you would…want me to sleep somewhere else?”
Where? The floor?
As if I’d make her do that.
I go to my desk and set my phone down. “Why would I want you to sleep somewhere else? Unless you’re more comfortable in here alone? I can go to the living room, or sleep on the floor here?” I point to the beige carpet, already reaching for a pillow to throw down. “If anyone should take the rug, it should be me.”